letters to give back

first and foremost

this is a poem to the straw-brimmed hat that personified death wears.
it's torn. the criss and the cross of the hay has been interrupted by holes. he holds it between his boned fingers in a manner that can be seen as polite, maybe nervous.
it is a plain hat, no ribbon to hold its waist.
it does not protect from the sun all that well, i have seen death curse at it, with what little width his hands provide he covers the holes with them. i have seen death even drop his hat with almost no care but he must always return to it. this is death with no hell, no underworld, no hades, no styx. this is death with inconvenience in the form of a straw hat. this is death with no other responsibility. i have seen death smoke cigarettes while wearing the hat, i have seen him cross streets holding the brim so no wind might move it. his hollow eyes show no remorse and no passion under the brim of that hat. and why would it be that this hat is the subject of his care. an entire poem a story an epic of this hat,
i asked him,
and he said to me,
"it was picasso's,
and di vinci's,
woven from kahlo's back-brace,
van gogh had coughed his sickly yellow paint bile in it.
the mesopotamians prayed to it,
children of the nile gathered water with it,
the people of sparta bred and birthed in it,
greeks cried and bled for it,
and the romans stole it.
diseases and science have been declared in the name of it.
the natives skinned it and roasted it above fire, they made it sweat until it crinkled.
scopes and bryan debated it.
it was conquered, and raped, and killed until its guts covered the ground we walk."
and then he turned with no other word and no other display of the hat and yet i knew it was far too precious to be atop the head of death. but there it lay,
balanced on the high brow of his head like a cliff,
and no other worried soul to see it.